The approaches described in this section could be pursued, but are not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Video conferencing is quickly becoming a business critical service that is relied upon by organizations to reduce travel expenses but continue to conduct business with a “face-to-face” experience. In the past, business critical meetings were always conducted in person, but as the availability and cultural acceptance of conducting business via video conference technology becomes more pervasive, conducting business over high quality communication links is quickly becoming the choice mode of conducting business. High quality video conferencing solutions are offered by Cisco Systems, Inc. under the brand name TELEPRESENCE.
With this technology, participants in a meeting are located at different geographical locations and communicate with each other via high quality audio and video links, such as high definition video. The communication links are part of a deployment formed over a communications network. The participants may be located in different time zones or even different countries. A meeting is essentially a teleconference call where each of the parties participating in the teleconference call can communicate remotely with each other at specially equipped teleconference locations. Usually a designated room at each geographical location is specially equipped to provide high quality audio and video links, and participants of the teleconference call gather at the designated room of each geographical location to use the specialized equipment to participate in the teleconference call.
Unfortunately, as with any new technology, problems can arise that cannot easily be prevented. Some technical issues may render the meeting resources unusable or potentially providing an unacceptable quality for the meeting which is scheduled to take place. Participants of the meeting might waste valuable time trying to fix the technical problems, or trying to find an alternative method of participating in the meeting, or give up altogether. Business priorities may change and a new room location may be needed due to changes in the priorities or personal travel schedules.